Kovacevic: All these Indy crash-and-burns

The big leagues are hard.

No one, in this moment, on this Monday night at PNC Park, in this miserable clubhouse, could speak to that more movingly than Kevin Newman. He's the Pirates' first-round pick from 2015, he'd just been promoted from Class AAA Indianapolis last weekend, and he just made his first start in this 1-0 loss to the Braves ... and he wound up 0 for 3 with a whiff.

I asked him afterward to share his very first impressions of the difference between the minors and majors.

"Well, the guys are bigger, the pitchers are better, and the game's faster," Newman replied. "It's all around an elevated level of play. It's definitely harder. I mean, these are the best players in the world. You come up here, and it's not easy right away to get a grip on everything."

That tale's been told, in various voices, for a century and a half.

But man, is it really supposed to be as hard as almost all of the Pirates' callups from Indianapolis make it look?

I compiled these two lists myself after the game:

Meadows, a first-rounder of whom much had been expected, did deliver: In 154 at-bats, he slashed .292/.327/.468 with five home runs and, on July 31, became a vital piece of the trade that brought Chris Archer. Good for him. Good for all involved in getting him to that point.

But now look again at that list up there, and answer this: Why did everyone else have to add up to a collective catastrophe?

I know, I know, it's uncool to blame young players for anything. I get that. Young players are where we store our hopes. We hate hearing/seeing/reading anything that tamps that hope.

But that up there, my friends, is the spelled-out symptom of the greatest underlying cause of this franchise's shortfall year after year after year: This baseball operations staff, under this front office, can't draft, can't develop and, when circumstances demand that they call up these players, they can't get anything approaching results.

That's why they have to overpay as they did for Archer, giving up far more than the Astros did for Gerrit Cole. That's why their 2013-15 playoff clinchings were built on free agency and trades, contrary to common misconception, and hardly at all on creating internal talent. And yeah, that's also why they have to allocate way too much of an already-too-tight payroll to fill holes externally.

Can't draft. Can't develop. Can't get results when they call someone up.

I'm not citing Newman, of course, as that'd be obscenely unfair. But I'm also well past the point of dismissing each individual mess as it occurs simply because of sample size. Not when the size is spread out like that list above and, in fact, has been the case throughout this front office's tenure.

I'm also increasingly weirded out by anyone blaming Clint Hurdle for sending someone like Jordan Luplow up to pinch-hit when ... man alive, Luplow's one of the bats he's been given! That's not the manager's call, and it most assuredly isn't the manager's fault, and it's bizarre to even have to express that.

The seventh inning of this game might as well have summed this all up.

Newman led off hacking at the first pitch for a soft 4-3 groundout.

Adeiny Hechavarria, the 29-year-old journeyman just claimed off waivers because the front office doesn't yet trust their top two shortstop prospects -- Newman's 25, and Kevin Kramer's 25 in a couple months, by the way --  stroked a single to left.

With one out, a man aboard and the most modest of rallies underway, Hurdle sent up Luplow, no doubt holding his nose as he's had to do all summer in these situations. And when a wild pitch put Hechavarria at second, Luplow's at-bat suddenly became more pivotal and, in all probability, had Hurdle wishing he'd had a bona fide big-leaguer up there.

Well, he didn't:

That's Luplow flailing at a third strike that might have wound up on Observatory Hill had he not tipped it into the catcher's mitt.

That's bad baseball. And it's bad baseball by a young-ish -- not really, as he'll also turn 25 next month -- and bad-so-far baseball player. In 124 at-bats since the first of his many meritless promotions last July, he's now got 30 strikeouts to out-stack his 24 hits and .194 average. For this season, he's at .174 and, including the above gem, 0 for 8 as a pinch-hitter.

Small problem?

Sure, but again, only if it's in isolation. And it isn't. Heck, it isn't even limited to the hitting. As I mentioned at the time of all those controversial rotation calls, nothing was set in stone that Clay Holmes, Tanner Anderson, Dovydas Neverauskas and all these other Josh Smoker jokers had to be utter disasters.

Imagine if they'd just been ... I don't know, reasonably below-average?

• Now contrast that to these first-place Braves, who've surprised everyone in the baseball world. Or at least those who weren't aware of the immense strides they've made in recent years at drafting and developing, returning to the roots of their great ride in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Bryse Wilson, a 20-year-old righty called up by Atlanta earlier in the day to make his big-league debut, pitched five scoreless innings -- three hits, three walks, five Ks -- and oozed poise throughout. He also stood in line in that regard, as he was the third 20-year-old starter the Braves have used this season. Overall, they've had seven of the 14 youngest players in the majors:

7 youngest players in @MLB this year:#Nats Juan Soto, 10/25/98#Braves Bryse Wilson, 12/20/97#Braves Ronald Acuña, 12/18/97#Braves Koby Allard, 8/13/97#Braves Mike Soroka, 8/4/97#Astros Kyle Tucker, 1/17/97#Braves Ozzie Albies, 1/7/97

With Touki & Gohara, ATL has 7 of 14

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 20, 2018

"We've got a lot of young people here," Atlanta center fielder Ender Inciarte was telling reporters on the other side. "It's fun. They're kids still. They're coming here young, and they're performing and helping us win big games."

Sorry, dude, can't relate.

• I did ask Newman if he saw talent in Indianapolis -- offensive talent -- that might someday help.

"We have a great team down here," he replied without hesitation. "They're swinging it really well and playing really good baseball. Yeah, definitely, there's some good offense down there."

He's right, actually. The Indians rank No. 1 in the International League  with a .272 batting average and .757 OPS. But their top five hitters are Osuna, Newman, Kramer, Luplow and a 31-year-old catcher named Ryan Lavarnway, and the only one among the first four who hasn't already taken swings in Pittsburgh is Kramer.

• What else to say about this offense of late?

The first five games of this homestand have now seen three 1-0 losses and a cumulative offensive output of five runs. More maddening by far, the pitching has held down the opponents, first the Cubs and now the Braves, to one run in each of those five games ... and they still lost three!

It's the first time they lost three out of five when allowing five or fewer total runs since July 13-18, 1888, when they were the historically horrendous Pittsburg Alleghenys. And you know you're going way back when you're referencing that era when the city dropped the 'H' from the end.

• Hurdle benched Starling Marte for not running out a grounder Sunday, and hooray for that. But the manager wasn't even afforded the luxury of standing by that because of his bench, as he had to send Marte out as a pinch-hitter in the ninth.

How much of a slump like this is collective?

I asked the manager:

• Count me out of jumping to any conclusions regarding Archer's early blahs. He's been too good for too long. He's earned a real chance.

• Not sure how many have realized this yet, but PNC Park will finish 2018 with zero sellouts, a first in the stadium's 18-year history.

That can't be official, of course, until the season's up, and 14 home games still remain. But as I'd written a week ago, if they weren't going to be able to sell out this past Saturday night against the Cubs -- with fireworks and a ton of opposing fans wearing blue to pad the figure -- that was going to be the last chance. That crowd wound up 35,100, well short of the officially listed capacity of 38,747. Only two Saturdays remain, and they're both in football season.

Hey, just wait till Luplow's bobblehead day next summer.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY